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Follow Me Wiki
Follow Me: Small Unit Tactical Trainer “Follow Me” is a small unit leader tactical training game specifically designed to support the instruction of junior officers and NCOs in the art of tactical command. Although it is simple to operate and easy to learn, the game environment challenges the military student’s ability to rapidly assess dynamic situation, make sound decisions, and effectively direct subordinate units. In many cases, students can complete an exercise in fifteen or twenty minutes; giving them more than adequate time to reflect on their “lessons-learned” and conduct multiple exercises during a single class session. The United States Military Academy at West Point used “Follow Me” in May 2008 to test the tactical knowledge and critical thinking skills of more than nine hundred cadets shortly before their graduation and commissioning as officers in the U.S. Army. The effectiveness of “Follow Me” as a training tool is a result of a strong design and development process that began with a thorough understanding of the desired learning outcomes, simple cognitive task analysis of the associated leader skills, and strong subject matter expertise. This approach coupled with several effective spiral development cycles and superior classroom instruction led to its strong acceptance during initial use. Decisive-Point, the developer of “Follow Me”, creates computer games and simulations specially designed to develop and hone individual cognitive skills and team processes. These “serious” games facilitate the deliberate practice needed to attain higher levels of individual and team performance, and develop adaptive leaders who can successfully solve complex problems during dynamic situations. Follow Me History In the spring of 2008 the Warfighting Simulation Center or WARCEN was given the requirement to provide a low overhead, easy to use, simulation that would allow 1000 cadet’s to assume the role of a light infantry platoon leader. The game had to be easy to learn in about 15 to 20 minutes and provide some feedback on how well the cadet performed. During our evaluation we looked at several commercial off the shelf programs but only one of them came close to meeting all of our requirements; particularly ease of use, and the ability to easily modify maps, icons, and special media. We identified a serious game called, “Follow Me”, developed by Decisive-Point of Kansas City, MO which met almost all of our requirements. Due to the successful use of Follow Me during the capstone exercise, it was decided that it should be integrated in to our third year tactics course MS300. The gap between classroom instruction and practical application has always existed in regards to tactics training. Although the capstone version of Follow Me met our requirements for that exercise, it did not meet our requirements for integration into MS300. Follow Me was developed to meet a specific need here at the Academy, but its application in other institutions is quite obvious. Follow Me has applicability in the Reserve Officer Training Course at other universities, as well as other traditional Army education and training institutions such as the Infantry and Armor schools. In the regular Army, including the reserve and national guard components, Follow Me can be used to teach, improve, and sustain, tactical problem solving at the platoon and company level. Why use Follow Me? *Easy to teach. It takes about 10 minutes to learn the use interface and another 10-15 to truly master it. This is a huge benefit in time constrained learning environments because it allows the student to quickly get to the heart of why they are using the program which is to learn, they are not there to become experts at playing the game. Games such as first person shooters require the player to be proficient at the controls in order to play the game well. The game itself is an obstacle because of this. If a new player is thinking about the controls for example "what key do I press to get into the prone position" they are not thinking about tactical decisions, they are more focused on game decisions. *Correct echelon. Arguably one of the most important aspects is what level will the player be controlling their units. We are producing platoon leaders therefore our cadets need to be making platoon level decisions. In a first person shooter game that would require at least 30 more players to simulate a whole platoon. In some FPS games you have the ability to control AI soldiers as part of a squad or team, in other words one person could control a squads worth of AI soldiers. The problem with this is that it increases the learning curve immensely and would require significantly more time to become proficient at doing. Another more critical drawback is that the AI soldiers are not very smart, they will not react like real soldiers, afterall it is just a game. The problem is the human player will expect them to, and when they do not, the human player becomes frustrated and loses focus, another distraction. In our classes we typically have 18 cadets. In the one hour of class time we have with them, we want everyone of them to make platoon level decisions. *Resources. Many institutions and organizations have limited resources. ROTC units typically do not own their own computer labs and must rely on university resources. Time is another resource that few of us have, one or two hours being the norm. In our case we only two hours of class time with our cadets over the course of a week. And last but not least is personnel. Follow Me does not require 30 players in order to do a platoon operation, a single player can play the game and still make platoon level decisions. Our classes are maxed out at 18 cadets. We do not have the ability to field a whole platoon nor do we have the time to rotate everyone through as platoon leaders. Follow Me allows us to train all 18 cadets at the appropriate level in an hours worth of class time. *Flat learning curve. There are a total of 11 commands in the current version of the game. Unlike most games Follow Me was specifically designed for the classroom thus it had to be easy to teach and easy to learn. In designing Follow Me we made no distinction between the learning audience or their instructors. In most cases both groups would have little to know experience in using a game to learn or teach. We wanted the instructors to be comfortable using the game and we wanted the players to be comfortable playing the game. Keeping it simple was one of the guiding principles in designing the game. *Turnkey gaming system. Follow Me is a robust gaming "system" that allows the organization to customize it based on their needs. Maps, icons, equipment, and special media, can all be created by the user. Maps are created using a paint program such as Paint Shop or Gimp which is a free shareware paint program and for the sake of this conversation just as powerful as Paint Shop. Icons are created using an icon editor such as Axialis or a free shareware editor like IconFx. Special media files are pictures, audio files, movie clips, or text messages, that are used to create events in the Follow Me. For example in a recent exercise we used events to create roleplaying opportunities for the cadets to solve. First a picture would be displayed showing the situation and describing the event. If the cadet wanted to act on it they had to move to the roleplaying area. A roleplayer would then proceed to that roleplaying area and start interacting with the cadet. Category:Browse